Philip Ziegler - King Edward VIII

Freda Dudley Ward, as nobody else was able to do before the advent of Mrs Simpson, gave him the strength he needed. She alone could cheer him up when he was in the blackest depression, could cajole or bully him back to the path of duty. Without her he could manage, but at a fearful cost to his nerves and to conspicuously less good effect. When on his foreign tours, he constantly inveighed against the cruel fate that separated them and agonized over the strain of keeping going without her support. His tone was sometimes hysterical, but essentially he wrote no more than the truth.

She was an excellent influence on him. She made him drink and smoke less – though herself a chain smoker; she encouraged him to do what he was best at; she laughed him out of his occasional absurdities. She fostered his genuine concern for the injustices of society and tried, to less good effect, to broaden his intellectual horizons. Once she gave him a copy of Wuthering Heights to read. ‘Who is this woman Bront?’ he asked dubiously.’ 35She told him home truths in a way nobody else did, yet never forfeited his total confidence. ‘Self-pity is a most degrading thing,’ he wrote, ‘and you’ve driven all mine right away and about time too. I know I’m hopelessly spoilt and therefore discontented … I’m so grateful to you for showing me myself … and it’s the first time I had a look at “the brute” for months!! But now I can see how utterly ridiculous and futile he is, and I’ll try and reform him a bit in Canada.’ And then a cry of pain: ‘If only I didn’t feel so lonely nowadays.’ 36

Great though her influence was, she was reticent in using it and never did so to her own advantage. The Prince’s Comptroller, Sydney Greville, once reported a scare over the Prince ‘rushing off to appoint a nominee of Mrs Dudley Ward’ as equerry,’ 37but there is no other suggestion that she interfered in the running of the royal household. On the contrary, all the Prince’s staff liked her and welcomed her; ‘one of the best friends he ever had in his life,’ Bruce Ogilvy described her. 38

As she was to discover herself in due course, there was only room for one great love in the Prince’s life. Any previous claimant to the title was ruthlessly discarded. Portia Stanley appeared at a shooting party at Sandringham. ‘I stood no rot from her,’ reported the Prince. ‘She only stood with me at one drive and that was because she asked to and it was tricky to say NO. I loathe that woman, and it maddens me her showing herself in here like this.’ 39He was fiercely jealous of any rival. Freda’s admirer of long standing was Lord Pembroke’s younger brother, Michael Herbert. The Prince was in torment whenever he knew that the two were likely to meet. She wrote to him from Lady Desborough’s home to report that, though Herbert was in the house party, she had seen little of him. ‘Good! good! and more! more!’ applauded the Prince. ‘I do love to hear that and I bet he tried hard enough to get you alone and he must have been furious too!! I’m so so glad and happy darling.’ 40In return he constantly assured her that he found all other women dull and unattractive, and she professed to be upset if he seemed to favour one or other of them. She wrote crossly when he was seen at the Grafton Galleries with Edwina Mountbatten. ‘I’m sorry if I annoyed you …’ he wrote penitently, ‘though I hate your putting it that Edwina took me. Darling, no bloody woman takes me anywhere and it was Dickie who suggested it and I couldn’t see any harm … But I’m sorry my sweetheart, though please don’t think that I’m led around by other women.’ 41In these first hectic years, indeed, to all effects there was no other woman. His intimates continued to hope otherwise. In Canada at the end of 1919 Claud Hamilton believed he might propose to the lady who was subsequently to marry Joey Legh – ‘if only “it” would happen, it would be the most wonderful thing in the world and save the British Empire’. 42But such hopes were illusory. When he visited Kyoto during his tour of Japan the geishas wanted to take the rings off his hand. He let them remove the signet ring ‘but naturally not yours my sweetheart and it took me quite a time to assure them that I wasn’t engaged!! If only they knew how very heavily married I am, darling angel.’ 43

He found in Freda Dudley Ward’s home the family life that was lacking – or that he convinced himself was lacking – at court. He loved her two daughters, and would call in to see them even when their mother was away. ‘The babies were in marvellous shape,’ he wrote after one such visit, ‘and I can never tell you what they didn’t do to me, from binding me up on the floor with ribbands and pulling my hair etc etc. I do adore those divine little girls of yours, sweetheart, and love playing with 2 wee editions of Fredie!!’ 44They for their part treated him as a much-loved uncle and pined for his visits. Towards the end of the Second World War the elder daughter, Angela Laycock, wrote to him: ‘It is so many years since I last saw you that I suppose I can no longer start my letters “Darling Little Prince” though that is how I should like to begin … You can’t imagine how much I miss you still, after all this time. You see, my childhood is so full of happy, happy memories and you are bound up in all of them.’ 45

His own siblings abetted the romance. Princess Mary forwarded the letters which he wrote to Freda almost every day from France, slipping out to post them when her French governess had her back turned. 46Prince Albert kept the home fires burning when his brother was on tour: ‘She is miserable now without you and feels quite lost … I will look after Freda for you to the best of my ability.’ 47

Not surprisingly, the King and Queen were less enthusiastic about their son’s liaison. The King had never met Mrs Dudley Ward and considered her social background made her inappropriate as a friend for his eldest son, let alone anything more intimate. Though time modified his attitude, his first assumption was that she was a pernicious influence and should be cut out of the Prince’s life. ‘Papa seems to think that anything you do which he doesn’t like has been influenced by Fredie,’ warned Prince Albert. ‘This of course is due to the great popularity which you have everywhere, and Papa is merely jealous.’ 48The Queen was quick to indignation if she thought that her son was allowing his mistress to distract him from the course of duty. On one occasion he asked if he might miss a court function. Queen Mary knew that he wanted instead to go to a dance which Freda Dudley Ward was attending. ‘I was aghast when I read your letter,’ she wrote. ‘It would be very rude to us were you not to come tonight.’ ‘A pretty hot letter!!’ was the Prince’s rueful comment when he passed it on to Mrs Dudley Ward. 49Such rebukes did not shake his affection for the Queen. ‘My mother is sweet to me and so sensible,’ he told Freda; ‘there’s really no rot about her although she is a martinette. But that is her upbringing and no fault of hers, and she really is a wonderful woman.’ 50But inevitably this new, all-important association eroded the relationship which had been built up between mother and son. ‘Curious David does not confide in you any more,’ commented the King in 1922. ‘I suppose he only does so to her.’ 51

What evidence there is suggests that, for the first eighteen months or so of their affair, Freda Dudley Ward cared as deeply for the Prince as he for her. It could not endure at such intensity. Mrs Dudley Ward needed someone who was more regularly in her life than the itinerant Prince, whose friendship posed less social problems, who was more sophisticated and less doting. He was made miserable when, in the summer of 1920, Freda tried to cool down his ardour and to put the relationship on to a new, more platonic basis. ‘So you have heard from Fredie at last,’ the recently created Duke of York wrote to him. ‘It must have depressed you and worried you a good deal, I know, but whatever she says I know you will listen to.’ 52